


home videos

by calvinahobbes



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009, 2015 - Freeform, 2020, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:53:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25725415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calvinahobbes/pseuds/calvinahobbes
Summary: Dan and Phil, filming each other through the years.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 13
Kudos: 113





	home videos

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a rambly little thing in the form of three loosely linked vignettes. Not beta'd.

"Tell the camera what you're doing?"

Dan hasn't heard Phil sneak up. One minute he's standing, barefoot and without a shirt in Phil's mum's kitchen making batter while Phil is in the bathroom, and the next moment he's being accosted by a towel monster with a hand-held camera.

"What?" He has just a moment to panic before he remembers that this is just Phil. "Who is this for? You're not gonna post this?" He glances down at his garish print underwear that is definitely Phil's and feels a tiny ball of dread settle in his stomach.

But Phil doesn't put the camera down. "Of course not. Just for me. For us!" he amends quickly.

Somewhat mollified, Dan goes back to whisking batter. He takes a moment even though he wouldn't be able to name any specific conscious thoughts running through his head as he does it. Then he looks into Phil's camera lens and says, "I'm making pancakes because it is 3PM and _someone_ hasn't fed me anything yet today." He tries to go for a glare, crowding the camera (and Phil) and making Phil giggle.

"I feed you!"

"I'm a growing boy! I can't survive off jizz alone."

"Dan!" Phil shouts in outrage and puts the camera down.

"What? Thought you said it was just for us."

"In the future! Maybe when you're older you don't want our first home video to mention swallowing."

Dan grins and ignores the multitude of feelings that this talk of the future and other home videos to come spark in him. "Hate to break it to you, Philip," he says and points the camera back at his face. He raises an eyebrow. "But I'm pretty sure that in twenty years when you're an even older creep you're still gonna like the idea of me swallowing your cum." 

"Stop!" Phil laughs in that way that means the opposite. "I'm just trying to film my boyfriend cooking me breakfast and you're ruining it!"

The multitude of feelings whirl up again like a swarm of butterflies. "Boyfriend?"

"Yeah," Phil says, and it's both quiet and shy and stubborn somehow.

"Is that the first time you've said it?" Dan can't possibly wipe the idiotic smile off his face. He is helpless against it.

"Maybe," Phil grins. "See! Aren't you glad to have this historic moment on film?" 

Phil puts the camera on the counter and points it at them and goes to kiss Dan. Dan kisses back wholeheartedly, ignoring the camera and his breakfast project and trying not to worry about how stupid he's sure to look. He wraps his arms around Phil and lets himself get lost in it, the way he wants to always get lost in their kisses.

"Mmm, better stop or this is gonna be a whole other kind of home video," he mumbles eventually. The spark in Phil's eye is positively demonic. Dan cackles. "Oh, mate. Forget about it!" He grabs the whisk again and points it at Phil, ignoring how it drips batter on the floor. "Not in a million years."

***

The third time Phil fiddles with the book, Dan pulls off with a wet pop and glares at him. "Mate. Come on. Do you want me to leave the two of you alone?"

Phil, whose brain is currently located in his dick, takes a few moments to parse the question. "No, don't stop!" He whines. "You're essential to the process!" He adjusts the camera, and Dan rolls his eyes.

"Your mum's essential to the process," he mutters but takes Phil's dick back in his mouth anyway.

"Hey!" Phil says, but he transfers his hand from TABINOF to Dan's hair. "Just wanna commemorate the celebrations," he mutters, already zoning back out again.

Dan can't really reply at the moment, so he settles for huffing air out his nose and getting his free hand on Phil's balls.

There's still so much they can't show the world, so many aspects of their lives that they prefer to keep hidden. It keeps rolling around in his mind, even as they've been vlogging the whole creation of their book. It's one more thing their followers can't know about -- yet. He swings wildly between being excited about this secret that they'll soon get to share with millions of people, and deep bleak sadness at all the things they'll still not be able to share. That they don't want to share. 

This helps. Not the actual blowjob, although that's nice too. It helps to make something that's decidedly just for the two of them, something where the delineation is clear, especially as they've been mining their past lives for content that is both palatable and comfortable for them to show the world. Maybe it's ironic that he'd rather publish his actual confirmation of dropping out of uni than his favourite holiday photo of the two of them, Phil kissing him on the cheek under a sharp Portugal sun. So Dan is a mess. What else is new? Right now he gets to enjoy this as a private moment between just the four of them; them in the present and them in the future.

***

They're always filming, but Phil has been even more careful about documenting their lives since the pandemic started. 

"This could be an important historic document!" he insists as Dan unpacks their latest Etsy purchase of home-made cloth masks. 

Dan isn't sure at what point the thing with Steve begins to morph into a video. It happens organically, but at some point Phil moves past casual mentions of making the whole ordeal into a vlog to something that sounds more like ideas development. Dan is so used to the process by now, but he knows for sure it's happening when he feels another set of eyes joining him as he films. 

It's a strange feeling, not a definite thing, more like a vibe that this could be for _them_. That nebulous 'them', those millions of silent and not-so-silent viewers 'them', not just the-two-of-them 'them', Dan-and-Phil 'them'. 

But Dan feels himself leaning into it a little differently than he would a year ago, two years ago. He finds himself wanting to show them all something, to say something beyond what words can reliably do. (And god knows Dan takes a lot of words to say anything.) Also, they seemed to like his silent commentary in the plant tour well enough. 

So he allows himself a few cheeky moments to show them what he has, what he gets to live with and look at every day. He lets himself zoom in on Phil, and dwell on Phil, and almost tune Phil's words out in process. And maybe the angles or the zooms aren't that different from some other clips that have made it into their Day In The Life videos before. But the context is different. The context is a global pandemic, households isolating themselves. The context is a post-coming out universe.

And it's not loud or explicit, and it's not posting their private holiday photos on social media (which he still doesn't feel like doing), but it's something, some step towards the future. Showing, not telling, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. [Like/reblog on tumblr.](https://calvinahobbes.tumblr.com/post/625595802806534144)


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